the Native Races Author:Hubert Howe Bancroft Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III COLUMBIANS. Habitat Of The Columbia Gboup—Physical Geography—Sottbces or Food-supply—Influence or Food And Climate—Four Extreme Classes—Haidahs... more »—Their Home—Physical Peculiarities—Clothdio —Shelter—Sustenance—Implements—Manufactures—Arts—PropErty— Laws—Slavery—Women—Customs—Medicine — Death—The Nootkas—The Sound Nations—The Chinooks—The Shushwaps— The Salish—The Sahaptins—Tribal Boundaries. The term Columbians, or, as Scoulcr1 and others have called them, Nootlca-Columbians, is, in the absence of a native word, sufficiently characteristic to distinguish the aboriginal nations of north-western America between the forty-third and fifty-fifth parallels from those of the other great divisions of this work. The Columbia River, which suggests the name of this group, and Nootka Sound, on the western shore of Vancouver Island, were originally the chief centres of European settlement on the Northwest Coast; and at an early period these names were compounded to designate the natives of the Anglo- American possessions on the Pacific, which lay between the discoveries of the Russians on the north and those of the Spaniards on the south. As a simple name is always preferable to a complex one, and as no more pertinent name suggests itself than that of the great river which, with its tributaries, drains a la Te portion of this territory, I drop "Nootka" and 'Ti.: Nootlca-Columbians comprehend 'the tribes inhabiting Quadra and Vancouver's Island, and the adjacent inlets of the mainland, down to the Columbia River, and perhaps as far S. as Umpqua River and the northern part of New California.' Scouler, in Land. Geoy. Soc., Jour., vol. xi., p. 221. PACIFIC SI COLUMBIAN FAMILIES. 151 retain, only the word 'Columbian.'2 These nations have also been broadly denominated F...« less